• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, June 10, 2008

It's still feuding with Google in court, but Viacom today announced a deal with YouTube friend Hulu.com.

With the deal, full-length episodes of Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" and the "Colbert Report" will be available on Hulu.com, the fast-growing joint venture of NBC and News Corp. Comedy Central will get a portion of any ad revenue attached to the programs on Hulu.com.

Hulu.com currently has a promotional channel on YouTube, but no portion of the Comedy Central clips will be available on that channel.

Still, the deal -- marking the first time Viacom has agreed to distribute on Hulu -- raises the question whether it's really in Viacom's interest to pursue its well-publicized copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube.

Viacom has been complaining in court that YouTube profited from pirated clips because the video-sharing site was able to use those clips to draw traffic to the site, which helped build the company's brand name.

If YouTube now drives Web users to Hulu.com, and those users then view Comedy Central clips, there's at least a case to be made that YouTube is helping boost Viacom's coffers.

Of course, any deals that Viacom makes now aren't technically relevant to the legal question of whether YouTube is liable for copyright infringement or whether the Digital Millennium Copyright Act gives it a safe harbor from such claims.

But, leaving aside how a court of law would view the deal, today's deal with Hulu certainly makes it harder for Viacom to try to justify its stance in the court of public opinion.